There are a wide variety of electrical connector assemblies which are arranged for mating with a printed circuit board. One type of such a connector is arranged or adapted for connecting to the board at an edge thereof. These connectors often are called "edge card" connectors. Within this category of connectors, there also are a wide variety of edge card connector arrangements. It should be understood that some edge card connector arrangements equally are adapted for receiving and/or connecting a mating flat cable which includes a plurality of discrete conductor wires embedded in a flat substrate of insulating material.
Electrical connector arrangements of the character described above often include an slot formed in a side of the connector housing. In the case of a printed circuit board, the slot may receive a tongue portion projecting from the edge of the board. In the case of a flat cable, the slot may receive a distal end of the cable. Many such connectors also include fastening means, such as elongated screws or bolts, for mounting the connector housing to a chassis or a second printed circuit board. It would be desirable to employ this same fastening means for interconnecting or locking the board/cable to the electrical connector.
In most such electrical connectors which have elongated slots for receiving an edge portion or end of a board or cable, a plurality of terminals are mounted in the housing along the slot, and spring contact portions of the terminals are biased against contact pads on a side of the printed circuit board, for instance. Many such connectors rigidly clamp the board within the slot against movement perpendicular to the plane of the board. This creates problems in the spring contact portions of the terminals developing a "set" over time, whereupon the spring contact portions lose their resiliency and their effective biased engagement with the pads on the circuit board. In addition, problems are encountered in developing stresses in the areas around the fastening means which interconnect or lock the board to the connector housing. This invention is directed to an arrangement for solving these types of problems.